Episode #55 Digging

This is the puppy training podcast episode number 55. Digging.

This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning as you train your own dog from home, and I'm here to help you every step of the way, this is the puppy training podcast. And I'm your host, Amy Jensen. Hey, everybody, how are you today? Hope you're doing great. Hope your dogs are great. I hope you are wonderful. We're starting to come out of this a little bit. It seems like we're able to get out of our houses a little bit more. Hopefully you're staying safe where you are. I know we're in all different areas, and it looks maybe a little differently, depending on where each of us live. So I hope you're staying safe. And I hope you're doing well. Today I want to talk about digging. This is a question that I get asked every once in a while Hey, I've got this puppy. They're digging in my yard. What can I do about it? What should I do about it? What do you recommend? And I thought you know what, let's do a podcast on it. So let's talk about digging. Alright, so how many of you have a puppy who just loves the dirt they love to go out in the yard And if you're not out there with them, that's the first thing that they go for, you know, they could even be digging in their dog beds, or they're digging on your sofas, or they're just scratching at things and why are they doing this? And what is it all about? So first of all, recognize that digging is a natural dog behavior. It's very common when dogs have pent up energy, maybe they're lacking in some exercise, and they need an outlet for that energy. They do it a lot of times out of boredom. So if they don't have a structured activity to do or to think about, then they might turn to digging. It also helps them cool down. So you'll notice before they lay down at night, they might dig in their bed and turn and circle and scratch it their bed, trying to get down to a cooler surface, where if they're outside, you'll notice that they dig through the grass to get to the dirt because the dirt is cooler, and they want to get to a nice cool spot. Dogs also dig to bury their things, maybe their prized possessions that they don't want other animals to find so they might bury their bones or the favorite toys. Dogs could also be digging to alleviate stress. And as a way to help them, relax and settle down. So there's many reasons why dogs dig. What do we do about it if we don't like our dog digging up our backyard that has some nicely manicured grass or our beautiful flower beds that we recently planted, I understand and I've been there. And I understand that that's not always a great thing, right? We work really hard to keep our homes and yards nice. And having a dog that comes along and decides today can be a problem. Actually, I found a funny video this past week just on social media. And it was a man planting a garden and he would dig through the garden. Or sorry, he was going to plant the plant so he would queue his dog to come over and the dog would dig. And then he would queue him off of that hole and the man would plant the plant and bury it and then he accused the dog to come over again and the dog would dig another hole and then the man would plant the next plan. and so forth. And I thought, what a great way to involve your dog who loves to dig in a constructive way. Right? All right. So today, I'm going to give you a few more ideas. I know not all of us are going to now train our dogs to be our hole diggers for our plants. But hey, it's not a bad idea. Just saying. Alright, so what are some more ideas that you can use to prevent your dog from digging up things that you don't want them to? For instance, in your yard? So first of all, anytime I talk about a behavioral issue, I go to management, if there are things that I can prevent, I'm preventing them. So this in digging might look like a temporary fence? Is it possible that you can use some flexible barriers or some temporary fencing to block off areas that you don't want your puppy to get access to? This may be under decades, you can use some lattice to block that area off. If you have flower beds or a garden area. Could you possibly put up some temporary fence posts with some flexible fencing that you could then Keep your puppy out of that area. The other thing I like to use as a long line when my puppies out in the yard with me this way, I have an easy way to redirect them off of an area I don't want them to be in, we can play and run and have a good time outside. And if they head over to that area where I'm not wanting them to be, I can quickly do a recall cue or a touch a touch behaviors a really simple one for most puppies that they love. It's very obvious what I want them to do as I hold my hand out for them to come running all the way back to me to bump their nose on my hand, which you know, then they get a nice reward for so either the come cue or the touch cue or great redirection of things to you know, help our puppy pay attention to us and come back to us when called and that long line prevents them from not listening. The other thing I'll use out in the yard is a tether. So I'll just take their leash and tether it to me so that the puppy goes where I go, and I can keep a close eye on them. Also a good idea for you know this type of

topic. The management issue is to Train your puppy while you're out in the yard, you know, structure time in the yard have a plan as to what you and the puppy will be doing. More likely the puppy so that you give them something very constructive to do so that they're not left to their own devices. And I put that under the management category because that takes a little planning. You know, you have to decide, we're going to go outside right now what can I do with the puppy? What can I have the puppy do? What can we work on, maybe it's a down stay, or possibly like a go to bed behavior. I love taking the go to bed behavior outside where I have an elevated dog bed, and I keep my puppy to go on this place and he's not to come off until released. And I'm rewarding him for staying there, you know, in different intervals. So I make it very rewarding and fun experience for him. And it helps while I'm trying to, you know, pull weeds or plant some plants and I don't want my puppy down where I'm working. Alright, so management First, if we can manage things, we're going to manage them. And then we get to the training part of it. And the reason we managed first is because training often takes some time especially With these young puppies, it takes some repetition. And you know, we are positively reinforcing their good behavior. And we're trying to build, you know, a desire in them to do that behavior more often. And this just takes some time. So in the meantime, we manage, and we also work on training so that we can replace the management with skills. So a couple of other things to think about when it comes to digging is your puppy is possibly needing some exercise both mental and physical. So what are some things that you can do with your puppy in your yard to get out that physical and mental energy? Round Robin recall is a great game where you can have several people stand in a circle, and they take turns calling your puppy across the circle, your puppy gets to run to one person, they give him a treat, then they run to the other person, they give them a treat, and we just keep going back and forth, like a ping pong ball essentially, so that your puppy is running back and forth responding to that comm recall queue and getting rewarded for it. It's a great way to get energy out but you're training at the Same time, hide and seek is another one of my favorites especially if you have kids in the home, you can hide around the yard squeaky toy your puppy comes and finds you, then you can practice a sit stay or a down stay and then run off and hide again and repeat the game it's a good way to get their energy out. obstacle courses are fun or creating like a homemade agility course for your puppy where they can go through tunnels and run over ramps and weave in and out of poles. And maybe you just set up some cones and you can get essentially the same concept by setting up you know, some kind of fun obstacle course for your puppy to do and then reward them for going through those different obstacles. All right, the other option that you have for outdoors when your puppy may be bored is to you know, throw out some interesting toys and choose so these are puzzle toys, possibly treat dispensing toys. My go to is a Kong or Steph a Kong and in the summer months I'll freeze that Kong. Then it makes a nice cold popsicle type treat for your puppy outside. You can fill bucket with water and then chop up some fruits and veggies that are safe for your puppy to eat inside and then freeze that bucket and go dump it on your lawn. And your puppy can work through that block of ice to get some goodies. So another thing about digging would be to, you know, give them an option of where they can dig. So maybe they can't dig in our flowerbeds or they can't dig in the garden area. But they can dig in, say a sandbox that we created for them. This might be a kiddie pool, one of those blue plastic pools filled with sand, and then you can bury some good things in there that your puppy can find. And that will keep him more motivated to go dig back through that space. Another idea that if you don't want to do the sand is to do a kiddie pool again with those plastic balls and make a ball pit for your puppy. And he's not really going to be digging through dirt or sand in this case, but he would fish through those balls to try to find treats or things that you sprinkle in there and that would be a good outlet for him as well. So make sure that you bury good stuff in there so that your puppy find some really great treasures and wants to keep coming Back to those locations to dick. So another reason why puppies dig we mentioned is that they are hot and they need to find a cool place to be so in your yard create shady places for them, so that they already have a cool place to lay down, they don't need to dig one up. So things for this would be planting trees in your yard. If you already have trees, you could stretch a tarp over some branches and make a tent essentially for your puppy to lie under a covered dog bed. So they'll make some like a cooler raised dog bed. There are brands that have a covering or a shade attached to them so that your dog will stay cool, you know and another option for staying cool is a pool. So you can get a dog pool, a kiddie pool, fill it with some water and let your puppy splash around and play in that so that he stays nice and cool. Alright, so after all of those options, if your puppy does start to dig, after you've given them all of these different things to do, you simply redirect them back into the Their sandbox where they can dig, or we're redirecting them back on to a training game, or possibly they need to go for a walk. And one of the favorite walks I like to take my dogs on is a sniffing walk or they can just be a puppy. I put them on a long 15 to 30 foot lead, we head to a park somewhere where they can just sniff and roam and go back and forth. And I'm recalling them back to me, every so often I reward them for checking in with me. And it gets out a lot of that mental and physical exercise that sniffing is really healthy for them. So again, here's some ideas for digging. There's a management first, as always, if your dog does go back to the digging, we try to redirect them. We maybe go inside, we change the activity. We're constantly managing these young puppies. It's a full time job, but you guys can do it. I'm sure you're doing great. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you guys next week.

If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my site Baxter & bella.com to contact me